


War-touched

by grim_lupine



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-04
Updated: 2010-06-04
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:59:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grim_lupine/pseuds/grim_lupine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“After this war, I have very little patience left for euphemisms.”  [Post-war, pre-epilogue.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	War-touched

-

\--

Ginny wants nothing to do with reporters and interviews. Living through it was hard enough; she has no desire to be questioned, for her answers to be examined and pored over and torn to pieces. Scores of reporters beg her and plead for an exclusive, but what changes her mind is this: once upon a time, she had been a frightened eleven-year-old girl, certain that the world was ending around her. At that time there were things she would have liked to hear, the reassurance that she would grow up strong enough to survive a war. It’s too late for her now, but perhaps—there will be another girl, shy and scared, who will read her words and take comfort from them.

“Ms. Weasley, what are your feelings today on the way this war was fought? Do you feel things could have been done differently? Do you wish you had stayed out of it, now that your family has been so—affected?” the reporter asks her breathlessly, staring up at Ginny intently, quill already scribbling away.

“Now that I have one brother dead, one missing an ear, and one permanently scarred, you mean?” Ginny asks coolly, and watches the woman flinch a little. “After this war, I have very little patience left for euphemisms.” She takes a moment to breathe, and reminds herself that there is a reason she is doing this. “We did what had to be done. We did what we could, with what tools and information we had, and we fought. ‘Staying out of it’ was never even an option.”

The woman ‘hmmm’s to herself, writing her answer down. “Do you have anything to say to the rumors that you and Harry Potter have—shall we say—found comfort in each other?” she asks, looking hopeful.

Ginny cocks her head to the side. “I don’t believe that’s relevant, do you?” she says calmly. “We were talking about me, and I do exist outside of Harry.”

The woman utters a hasty “of course,” and hurries on to her next question, which is the one Ginny has been waiting for all along: “Is there any message you would like to give people, something you want them all to hear?”

Ginny settles back into her seat, and _remembers_ : eleven, scared scared _so_ scared, sure that it was the end. But it wasn’t. She lived. She _lived_.

“Nothing is ever the end,” she says slowly. “Keep fighting, and whatever happens after might not be what you’re expecting; but as long as you’re alive, there’s always hope.”

*

They call you mad. They call you loony, Loony Lovegood; they laugh at your speech, and your jewelry, and your father. They laugh at the way you see the world.

Yes, maybe you _are_ mad, if being mad means always looking for good. If being mad means never believing that things are impossible. If being mad means knowing that nothing and no one are beneath your notice; that everyone is worth _something_.

Perhaps you are mad, for noticing those things that others don’t: the lines of strain on Hermione’s face when she otherwise looks like nothing can touch her; the signs of tension in Harry’s shoulders that tell you soon he will run from you all and search for the peace that anonymity will give him. The way Ginny has grown harder, a little reckless—as if nothing left in this world can scare her anymore. You know she dreams of being a child, unable to fight a memory. The only thing she fears anymore is being helpless.

You are mad, if being mad means being able to look at things and understand them, move past them, to talk of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks when you can remember the sight of Hogwarts drenched in blood.

If moving on is being mad, you don’t want to be sane.

*

 _Pretty_ , they used to say about her. _That Lavender Brown, such a pretty girl, with her pretty hair and pretty eyes and pretty pretty face_.

She stands in front of her mirror and studies herself; her face is a ravaged mask. The Healer that took care of her was too practiced to flinch, but she sees it in her family’s eyes when they look at her. She is no longer pretty, and it hurts them to see it.

“I am scarred,” she whispers to herself, strokes her fingers down her cheek, feeling every ridge and crease. She is scarred. She is wounded. She has no blithe laughter left in her, can’t remember how to smile so her dimples pop out. She used to look up through her lashes in a way that made boys choke; her lashes are burned away, and won’t grow back for a long time. She is weak—but no, that isn’t right.

She could have run, but she cared instead. She withstood a war. She saved her friends.

She fought. She fought, she fought, and she _won_.

“I am beautiful,” she says, voice clear and strong this time.

“Yes, dear, you are,” her charmed mirror says quietly; but then, she doesn’t need its validation, after all.

*

 _Once upon a time, there were three sisters—one was as dark and beautiful as night incarnate, one was warm and glowed like midday, and the third was pale and shone like daybreak itself. They loved each other dearly, even as they grew, even as the first became harder, and the second became distant, and the third thought that becoming colder would protect her heart. They grew together and grew apart, fought beside each other and then fought against each other, and though they tried to deny it they were sisters still. The eldest longed for power, and she had her fill of it, and it led her to her death. The other two knew her for wrong, but cried for her in secret, because she had been their sister once._

 _Family is important, but family can break. Blood cannot come before what is right._

 _The eldest sister died for her pride and her arrogance, and her sisters grieved, but when grieving was done they had to move on. The midday sister and the daybreak sister were estranged from each other; but you see, in the end, both had chosen right. The daybreak sister came through a twisting and jagged path, but she came through it nonetheless. They chose right, and perhaps it was time they found each other again._

 _After all, they were sisters._

This is a tale she might have liked to tell her son; but then, Draco is too old for stories now. Besides, this story is truly meant for one person alone, and she will take it there to be received.

Narcissa gathers her things and leaves to meet Andromeda for the first time in years. They are sisters, and with all she has withstood, she knows that is something to hold onto.

*

My tombstone’s not exactly what I would have picked for myself, but then, I guess I’m not the one who has to stick around and look at it, am I? That’s my mother’s burden. So she covered it in poetry and wrote _Nymphadora Tonks_ across it, when I would’ve preferred a good limerick and _never_ my full name; thanks, mum, for immortalizing me with the name ‘Nymphadora’. I guess that’s her right, though, and I only wish I were there to complain about it to her like I used to.

I’d have been buried with pink hair, too, if I’d had my way. Never really had a choice, though; once dead my hair went back to the way it really is. It’s funny, that. I lived with a hundred different faces, but when it came down to it, I died with the only one I’ve really got. There’s a message in that, somewhere, but hell if I know what it is.

Except, maybe, this: I’ve left my baby boy down there with no mum to guide him. My mother did wonders with me, but—it would’ve been nice for him to have someone who understood what it’s like to have your hair turn blue when you sneeze the wrong way, at least before you get control over yourself. If I were there I’d help him with that. I’d tell him to have fun. I’d tell him to play around with his looks and do his hair up in his House colors for Quidditch matches, whatever his House may be. I’d tell him to go through a rebellious phase. I’d tell him to be a mimic. I’d tell him to grow breasts and try being a girl for a day, see how it feels.

Most of all, I’d tell him this: play around all you want, my baby boy, but don’t settle for anyone less than a person who wants your _true_ face, however you may define that. Change yourself however you like, but do it for you. Never for someone else.

I’m dead, and it hurts, knowing I can’t hold my baby and watch him grow up; but I fought and died for something good, with the man I loved by my side, and that I don’t regret for a moment.

*

War stains her dreams and she knows she’ll never be quite free from its touch. She looks around her, though, and sees that the world has been left in shambles as well, that it needs someone to come along and set things right.

Hermione is never more at home than when there is something for her to do. There’s enough work here to last her three lifetimes, and she embraces it _all_. If there is one thing in which she differs from Harry, it’s this: she has no qualms about using the way people look at her, about being _Hermione Granger, one of Harry Potter’s best friends_ if it will get her what she needs.

There’s a part of her that remembers the Sorting Hat settling down over her ears and whispering to her, _You’ve got quite a brain, haven’t you? Outspoken as well, and more than a little ruthless when you know you’re in the right. Slytherin would bring that last one out, but somehow I think they need you more in GRYFFINDOR!_

She’s stopped putting stock in those House Sortings—after all, the child you are at eleven has little to no bearing on the person you grow up to become. If anything, she thinks that everyone has a little bit of every House inside them. She is Ravenclaw enough to be bursting with ideas for how to rebuild their society; Gryffindor enough to be brazen and push those ideas forward; Hufflepuff enough to care, and be loyal, and set herself to work at those causes that will help those dear to her; and Slytherin enough to be just a little— _ruthless_ , to always find a way to get things done.

Oh, she might fail, and she might make mistakes, but Hermione Granger has always taken comfort in the fact that no one and nothing can stop her from doing something once she puts her mind to it. It’s time to use that. There’s a world that needs fixing, and Hermione is more than up for the challenge.

*

There’s a little baby squalling at St. Mungo’s. Her face is red and scrunched up, and she looks tiny and wrinkled and wonderful. She has been waited for. She is loved.

She cries full-throatedly and makes her father wince at the volume of it, half-appalled, half-proud. She is as of yet unnamed, just has a placard that says ‘Baby girl Weasley’.

She has options, worlds of them—she might become a Quidditch player. She might be Head Girl. She might marry young, never marry, or marry then divorce then have countless lovers as she pleases. She might cure lycanthropy. She will fall down a hundred times, and let someone else pick her up until she learns how to get up herself. She will be brilliant at Potions, average at cooking, utterly hopeless when it comes to love; or maybe that’s backwards.

No one knows yet, you see. She lies there, as of yet unnamed, except for this: she is _potential_.

\--

-


End file.
